Mad Men
One word comes to my mind when I think of Mad Men – style. Mad Men is so stylish that you almost forget that all of its substance doesn’t really add up to a conventional story arc.

The show, in its second season seems to be going nowhere, and you couldn’t care less.
The show painstakingly recreates the American workplace of the 60′s, with all the political incorrectness and the sexual innuendos and the reckless smoking. The show’s central character is Don Draper, an advertising executive in Madison Avenue (mad men?), New York – a mysterious man with a dark past. The acting on the show is superlative and you could keep drooling at the beautifully recreated period details such as the interiors, the clothing and the mannerisms. The show’s atmosphere is almost film noir despite the color and everybody smokes like there is no tomorrow. Don Draper would say “I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.”

The Decalogue
Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue is a ten-part miniseries based on the ten commandments.

Often considered, a single film, the 10 films explore the complex issues of morality, free will, crime, ethics, love, and the relevance of the commandments through the lives of ordinary people living in a Warsaw apartment. Bold, subtle and thoughtful, each episode is a masterful dramatization of the complex moral and social dilemmas faced by these ordinary people and the difficulty of judging their decisions in the light of the commandments. Episode 6, A short film about love, is my favorite.

Twin Peaks
David Lynch’s spooky whodunit never answers the question it raises in the beginning – who killed Laura Palmer? But there is plenty of spine-tingling atmosphere and character development to keep you glued.

Populated with quirky and unforgettable characters, the series literally brings the whole town of Twin Peaks to life with its careful attention to detail. Special agent Dale Cooper who comes to the town to investigate Laura Palmer’s murder, is one of the most fully developed characters to have appeared on television, with plenty of memorable lines and notable idiosyncrasies. This show is best watched alone late in the night. There is plenty of surreal, mysterious atmosphere, supernatural spirits, backward talking dwarfs and plot twists to savor. Although it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and some of the later episodes seem to loose focus, Twin Peaks is one of the best things on TV.

Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica, commonly shortened to BSG, is essential science fiction on TV. The show combines gritty drama and space warfare in a way that will please even the most ardent sci-fi haters. BSG reached its forth season mid-season finale this year and is scheduled to resume in 2009.

This would be a great time to watch the first three seasons of BSG on DVD before the second half of the fourth season starts. The series examines various issues of military dictatorship, democracy and the fundamental question of what it means to be human; a question that is most obviously raised when humans face the cylons – machines that look human and are capable of reason, faith, trust, love, biological reproduction and are yet immortal. The space battles are always exciting and make for the best action on TV, without ever sacrificing the elements of drama. And did I mention, the cylon women are hot!

Curb Your Enthusiasm
All hail Larry David, the comic genius! Larry David is the creator of the hit sitcom – Seinfeld, another of my favorite shows which I will write about in the second part of this post.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is a close look at Larry’s life in a cinema verite style. Larry David constantly gets into the most awkward social situations with other people and the simplest of daily activities spiral into a chain reaction of the most bizarre outcomes at the end of each episode. The phrase – a Larry David moment – used to describe these situations is now part of the idiom. Everything about this show, from the use of music to the ad libbed lines from the cast is unique. Highly addictive!

Deadwood
At 1.56 fucks/minute in its dialogue, Deadwood is easily the most profane show on TV. But under all the gun slinging, the whiskey guzzling and the frequent use of the word ‘cocksuckers’ lies a most wonderful TV drama. Really! If you can handle the profanity and violence, Deadwood is the greatest dramatization of the wild west on television or cinema.

Widely praised for its writing and highly stylized dialogue, the show transports you to the lawless territory of Deadwood, South Dakota. The character of Al Swearengen, the owner of the Gem saloon in Deadwood, is played with great panache by Ian McShane, who was the voice of Tai Lung, the snow leopard in Kung Fu Panda. Swearengen must be one the greatest bad guys on TV. The show deals with the issues of misogyny, prostitution, race and capitalistic and political greed in its three seasons. Like so many great shows on HBO, Deadwood was canceled before its time. The three seasons of Deadwood make for splendid television.